5Written for Febuwhump day 25 – Car accident
I never planned to add to this fic but, hey, when the muse strikes, you listen
"It's not gonna work," Max complains from the backseat, his voice edging somewhere between exasperation and fear. Alex shakes her head and presses down on the gas pedal.
"It has to."
She takes her foot off the gear slowly, inch by inch. The wheels of the car spin rapid circles into the dirt but have nothing to catch on, nothing to propel them forward. Alex's heart must be running a thousand miles per minute.
"And what if it doesn't-" Max says as he blips into the passenger seat instead and braces his hands against the front panel. At the same moment that Alex completely steps off the shift and the car bounces forward. One short stutter and then it's going.
She doesn't answer. She couldn't before the front of the car reached that thin veneer of air – slightly shivering and off – that keeps them here. That prevents them from ever leaving. As the bumper hits it, there is a fizzle and a pop and then it blinks out of existence.
The front of the car disintegrates before their eyes.
"Fuck!" Alex yells, but it's already too late and she can't press on the brakes in time before half of the hood is gone. The car teethers and slips forward, angles to the front and Alex doesn't want to know what would happen to her if she hit that barrier, what would happen to Max. She yanks on the steering wheel with all her might, hoping to shift the car in the other direction.
It works – perhaps a little too well. The entire vehicle shakes and then it's tilting to the side. The window crashes into the ground first, splintering glass everywhere and one piece cuts Alex's cheek open. She closes her eyes, throws up her arms to protect her face from the damage. Then the roof hits a tree and the only thing keeping her from bashing her head open on the wheel is her seatbelt.
Fuck-
Alex doesn't know how long she sits there, dazed and too nauseated to get up. Distantly, she hears Max call for her and it compels her to try and move, ignoring the sharp pain in her back. She climbs out of the wreck with cuts on her hands and an aching headache but alive – alive – and Alex wants to cry.
Max is standing there, arms crossed. Completely unscathed of course, because the car crash couldn't touch him. Nothing within the barrier could. He draws up his lips, a sneer.
"I told you it wouldn't work."
"Yeah, yeah, I'll give you that one." Alex brushes the glass from her hair, ignoring the blood she smears into it in the process. "I'll give you that one for sure."
His frown deepens. "What now?"
Alex sighs. The weight of it bears on her shoulders and beyond her periphery, the thing watches, waits. It would love to sink its teeth into her too, she knows.
"Now we move on to plan B."
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